"He told us that he wanted to keep them away from any land used for agriculture, where they spray pesticides. There was no food for the bees, nothing to forage, but he gave them pollen substitutes and corn syrup."

Is this corn syrup made from GMO corn?

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:rainbowflower: Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. :rainbowflower:

He placed them on this ranch away from any food source. He told us that he wanted to keep them away from any land used for agriculture, where they spray pesticides. There was no food for the bees, nothing to forage, but he gave them pollen substitutes and corn syrup.

:-x

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During dinner, we were reminded that there is a stigma about CCD. No one wants to talk because people will think that itâ€™s their fault. Itâ€™s not, you know.

â€œBeekeepers are not activists, theyâ€™re just going to quietly slip away,â€ said another.

No where does the article mention the name of the "Largest beekeeper". My guess would be the Adee's 70,000 hive operation. :?

THIS IS THE ARTICLE I POSTED in a few post down the article was rewrighten one day after it was released here is the real deal 8-) http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:8_C1l4acZF8J:www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/blogs/b RDY-B

They must be trying to hide this thing big time--I get a "not available on this server" message.

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Life is a school. What have you learned? :brian: The greatest danger to our society is apathy, vote in every election!

I for one had read an article (i believe in abj) that there was a problem with hfcs due to a remixing problem and that was all that was mentioned. Not long after all you could by is sucrose. monsanto and the other giants that produce GMO foods have enough money to bury any link to them or their products if it is truly a problem. It will be years down the road before any details will be given. long enough for them to produce a cover up story. just my opinon mind you but it could have merit.

There is no two way about it, they are trying hard to sweep this under the carpet. The sorry thing is, that beeks themselves are at it. Seems like a faint money trail is beginning to emerge from the side of the "big-guns"... (Don't want to put down names, it is obviously a touchy issue for some?)

The story itself has been pulled twice already, but the picture is basically the same. Somebody is surely hard at work, trying to hide the truth....

With this kind of attitude who knows if we ever find the truth behind this?In the mean time, will our bees keep disappearing????

It's a bit of a jump to immediately think GMO. However, I don't think it would be hard to restrict a group of hives to only corn syrup and pollen substitute just to see how they would fare. Build a tent of mosquito net and don't let them out. Compare those results to a set of hives given real pollen and corn syrup. Compare that to a set of hives in with access to the whole world.

What this hypothetical study leaves out is the stress of moving a colony by truck around North America. With sufficient funding one could feed bees corn syrup all across this great land in the name of science.

I read the article while it was online. I really enjoyed the part about the hive boxes looking like tombstones marking the demise of so many bees. Weak journalism.

Please allow me to be skeptical. Please don't think I am being disrespectful.

Any fears of GMO may certainly be justifiable. However, if we present these points: a.) corn syrup is made from GMO corn b.) some bees fed corn syrup died ...and conclude that GMO killed the bees we have committed a logical fallacy.

In fact we have fallen to logical fallacy simply by concluding that these bees died from eating corn syrup. We may have theories, ideas, hypotheses and notions about what killed the bees in the article. We may ultimately reach conclusions based upon experimentation. Right now we have only the memory of a badly written, possibly fictitious article about an anonymous beekeeper in California and the knowledge that it was written by an author who is producing and selling a documentary on CCD. That author has made an investment and requires CCD to be relevant. I remain skeptical.

[ Right now we have only the memory of a badly written, possibly fictitious article about an anonymous beekeeper in California and the knowledge that it was written by an author who is producing and selling a documentary on CCD. That author has made an investment and requires CCD to be relevant. I remain skeptical.]

WE have the data this is not a publicity stunt -nothing anonymous about the original draft-these players are the back bone of the Industry-

Hello Beesbeesbees , You're new here I see . Welcome . Please , fill in your profile so we know where your from . You've picked an interesting topic to express yourself in for your first posts . There is room for opposing views here . I for one would like to better understand where you are coming from on this subject . Could you please help me out with that ? ---Burl---

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Of all the things I've ever been called ;I do like "Dad" the most . ---Burl---

Maybe I got off on the wrong foot. I'm not looking to pick a fight. I have lurked for a long time and learned a lot from this community. I mean no disrespect. I was trained as a scientist and taught that a scientist should always be skeptical of even his own research. That's why we peer-review the research and why many groups carry out independent studies. I am a very skeptical person.

I can't find the article anymore. None of the links given work for me. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong.

I was responding to a statement by another forum member that many here believe GMO killed the bees in question. I don't believe there is any data to support that. There may be data to support that the bees died of malnutrition, but I find it difficult, given what few facts I remember from the article, to specifically target GMO as the culprit. There is a good deal of fear both home and abroad concerning GMO foods. I believe there is good reason to fear what Monsanto is capable of right now even outside of GMO.

Perhaps I am mistaken about the anonymous beekeepers. I may have skipped a key paragraph. Maybe the names of the beekeepers were listed in the article and I have forgotten. If anyone can still link to the article please paste the contents out. I'm inclined to agree with Bennetoid that this is an example of media hype. Lots of fear in the article, excellent word pictures, few verifiable facts based on an acceptable sample size.

I would love to hitch CCD to GMO or malnutrition. I need something verifiable. I am very anxious to see what comes out in the next few months/years. In the meantime I will continue to lurk, learn about bees, yearn for spring and be skeptical. I hope you have room for me here.

Editor's Note: Maryam Henein is working with George Langworthy on The Vanishing of the Bees, a documentary film about colony collapse disorder (CCD) and the state of honey bees in America. She is a guest contributor to The Beekeeper, writing about the pollination of the almond crop in California, where honey bees are put to their first test of the season on a commercial crop.

Specific names have been removed because a prevailing sentiment among beekeepers has it that admitting to colony collapse disorder problems reflects badly on them (it should not). We believe the news is important enough to print using anonymous sources, and readers can be assured that the main facts have been double checked with primary authoritative sources.

Checking Hives in California Almond Country

Weâ€™re in the Lost Hills of Bakersfield California on our way to eat breakfast at Dennyâ€™s I met the beekeeper who knows where our hives â€“ Agnes, Betty, Cindy and Doris â€“ were amid the orchards. Two weeks ago we named four hives with a magnum Sharpie so we could track them throughout the seasons as they are shipped from one bloom to the next.

We scarfed down our breakfast and then set out for the orchards to find Agnes. Oh my God. California has more than 580,000 acres planted in almonds. Row after row after row of evenly spaced almond trees. Mind blowing. Monoculture at its finest.

I rolled down the windows and cranked up the XM satellite radio to Extreme Chill. I listened to BassNectar as I rode down this dirt path with bees whizzing by me. Every few yards there were bee boxes on the ground and a sign that read, â€œBee Drop.â€

Eventually, the beekeeper I was with started making his rounds, checking that the lids were on properly and that there were no problems. He also marked them with spray paint for transport. There are so many different beekeepers here that you need to carefully track each hive. Bee theft is also common around almond bloom season. One beekeeper had 80 of his hives stolen this year.

Finally we found Agnes sitting in the sun. We opened the lid to take the frames out. She was healthy. And we even spotted Agnes the Queen. Wow. She was beautiful. Golden, Big and Royal. â€œShe looked fertile,â€ George said.

We then found Betty and Cindy. But we didnâ€™t get a chance to look for Doris. In the early afternoon we set out to meet Frieda, a 76-year-old bee broker who works with her two sons. A bee broker is a go-between, linking the almond grower with the beekeeper. She is the one who coordinates the shipping and placement of hives.

"Miles Upon Miles of Empty Hives"

We next wanted to visit a beeyard of one of the biggest beekeepers in the orchards. They had shipped nearly 100 semi loads of bees to this beeyard (each truck has about 400 hives on it) from the midwest back in October. He placed them on this ranch away from any food source. He told us that he wanted to keep them away from any land used for agriculture, where they spray pesticides. There was no food for the bees, nothing to forage, but he gave them pollen substitutes and corn syrup. The bees were healthy then, but now the view was haunting. It looked like a cemetery. Miles upon miles of empty hives. White empty boxes in lieu of tombstones.

It was like we were visiting a funeral. It was sickening and surreal. There were only a few dead bees to be found. It was a mass exodus, a bee holocaust.

â€œYou know in the Christmas Carol, when the ghost shows him the future? This is our future,â€ one beekeeper said as we parked in front of towers of dead outs. It was a moment to remember. It was a moment in beekeeping history. Our bees are dying. I canâ€™t even fathom what I saw today. Words donâ€™t do it justice.

We ended the day by going to eat with the beekeepers. Of course we went to Denny's. During dinner, we were reminded that there is a stigma about CCD. No one wants to talk because people will think that itâ€™s their fault. Itâ€™s not, you know.

â€œBeekeepers are not activists, theyâ€™re just going to quietly slip away,â€ said another.

I donâ€™t want to believe him. I want to believe that they will put on their bee suits, grab a hive tool and go protest in the streets. We want our bees back.

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:rainbowflower: Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. :rainbowflower:

I am nearly as inept at beekeeping as one can be. I have everything to learn. But we (world community of beekeepers) will never know anything about CCD if there truly is a stigma to admitting you lost bees to it. I hope the article is wrong about that.